What have we learned?

[Christy Lee-Engel]

Dear Harrison and all,

Thank you for your irresistible invitation, which has goaded/enticed
this Appreciative Lurker to peek out for a moment. I like how this
thread has become a deep slow stream braiding through all the rest.

One of my current working definitions for "learning" is: "finding, and
making, new and cumulative knowledge, skills and meaning". In
considering what I've learned from/in Open Space, I find that it
doesn't have so much to do with businesses or formal organizations.
The way I have experienced and seen Open Space so far has been more in
the wide sense of ordinary life.

In the past 4 or 5 years since I was first invited into a consciously
Open space, I've gotten to participate in half a dozen or so
(including the Practice of Peace), and have ventured into opening
space at the school where I teach part-time, four or five times. So,
from a still very "beginner's mind" perspective, the areas where I am
learning a lot include these:

1)  Noticing the principles & law of OS in everyday life is
liberating, and such a relief.
Those descriptions of reality have been useful frames to offer to
everyone I work with (patients, students, colleagues) and live with,
even without being in a specific Open Space gathering. The more I
practice loosening my grip on wanting things to go or be a certain
way, the more relaxed and energetic I feel, the more aware and
responsive I seem to be--and in my line of work (natural medicine
practice & education) those qualities are good indicators of increased
health. Encouraging myself and others to trust in the goodness of the
law of two feet is like the "opening of the channels" of acupuncture
practice, allowing enthusiasm, willingness, inspiration, and the
energy for focused action, to pour and circulate without obstacle into
and through our lives.

2) Open Space encourages accelerated learning.
It has been breathtaking to watch what our students have come up with
in Open Space in terms of projects, and deep exploration of topics
they love, and organizing, and networking--nothing out of the ordinary
for what usually occurs in Open Space, I am sure, but aren't you
re-amazed every time you see it happen?

3) The importance of intentional preparation and conscious invitation.
That in order for an invitation to be alluring, it has to be about
something that really matters to people; invitation-crafting can be a
soul practice.
Getting to hear/read about the ways that many of the OSList members
prepare before an event-- the impeccable preparation for the task of
"being totally invisible and entirely present" -- has been
imagination-provoking, and has led me to think a lot about what it
means, or could mean, to prepare and hold space for a class (both
before the term begins and before each class session begins) and for
my work with patients.

4) How important it is that griefwork accompany truthful process.
As we learn to loosen our grip on what we think should happen, and pay
more attention to reality, we may have to let go of something we were
attached to, and then we need to acknowledge the loss that goes along
with that change. This was one of my main "take-home" messages from
Harrison's Practice of Peace morning talks, and it goes along with my
next learning:

5) The possibility (and importance) of "developing the capacity for
instant connection"
This one is a pith, or core, teaching I saw in a PoP post from Anne
Stadler. My experience has been that being in Open Space reminds us
(because often we've forgotten, but we used to know) how to connect
with other beings quickly and truly. And then the corollary of that
will be grief and loss (including the milder forms of grief such as
nostalgia and wistfulness and homesickness), because that particular
created community won't ever come together in the same way again, and
because the individuals that I got to connect with in that immediate
way are people I may never see or talk with again. So: Open Space
develops in us the capacity for instant connection, and the capacity
to let go with love and blessing.

6) And at the same time, there is a resilient sureness to the "Radiant
Network" that Peggy Holman and Anne Stadler describe.
Another way I understand learning is that lessons are gifts,
blessings, opportunities to wake up and see things I didn't see before
(even though they might have been there all along). Without question,
the most potent and precious gifts I've been given in every Open Space
I've gotten to participate in have been the deep-and-brief
connections, the collegial relationships, and the dear friendships,
each of which is opening up whole new worlds to me. It has been
fascinating and stunning to see how the connections then have begun to
overlap and mesh in terms of synchronistic interactions and the
unveiling of connections between people I didn't know were connected.
There is something about the withdrawal of control and imposition that
characterizes Open Space which allows the glowing tracks of
interconnectedness to become obvious.

Last summer, when I moved out of an office I had been in for a couple
of years, I found a little typed note taped to the side of one of the
book cases. It was titled "Rules for Spiritual Living" and listed, the
principles and law of Open Space (without mentioning OST by name). It
had been there all along, and I had never noticed it. I was glad to
know that it had been there, though, and I left it for my successor to
find for himself.

with great appreciation,
and hoping to make it to Halifax,

Christy Lee-Engel

One Sky Medicine
2611 NE 125th St Suite 100
Seattle, WA 98125
(206) 363-5555
clinic: http://oneskymedicine.org
weblog: http://lifecultivatinglife.blogspot.com

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>From  Mon Mar 28 01:16:01 2005
Message-Id: <MON.28.MAR.2005.011601.0800.>
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 01:16:01 -0800
Reply-To: chris at chriscorrigan.com
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Chris Corrigan <chris.corrigan at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: What have we learned?
In-Reply-To: <38e8612b05032722557dd8e27 at mail.gmail.com>
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Harrison:

In September 1995 I sat in a circle of something like 400 people at a
conference centre in Whistler and watched as Ann Stadler, Angeles
Arrien, Chris Carter and others opened space.  I convened a session on
storytelling.  Since then my life has not been the same.

When I first saw OST in action I knew that I had come home.  Something
resonated deeply in me about the process, something spoke to me of a
very old way of doing business that has been smothered in a flood of
newness.

It's impossible to put into a few words what I have learned as a
result of practising open space for coming on ten years now.  It's
fair to say that my entire life stands as a learning journey propelled
by passion and responsibility, being guided by the four principles and
the law and I've also noticed a few things about facilitating groups!

So here's something of what I have learned:

* it's possible to live a life around principles that some guy
assembled in a bar.
* the hardest thing in the world to do as a facilitator is to do nothing at all
* OST has re-connected me with my indigenous roots.  Elders know their
culture when they see it and the wide eyed astonishment I get from
Elders in open space tells me we're on to something...that our deep
traditions and wisdom about leadership and process ARE alive after
all, and have survived the cultural and historical slaughter like
grass seeds in a prairie fire and now it's popping up all over the
place.
* that there is no stopping people who discover that passion and
responsibility are the only two things you need to begin asking
questions that change everything.
* that anything you come up with should be freely given away in the
hopes that it will be used and abused by the world.  In this respect,
Harrison has set a standard of sharing that we are obliged not to fall
short of.  You cannot put this genie back in the bottle.
^ that whoever comes are the right people means that we can look at
one another in in the most remarkable ways, as teachers, leaders and
co-learners and that we are able to take our inspiration from
anywhere.
* That robustness and sustainability live in the connections in a
self-organized network and not in the nodes that acquire the power and
authority at the expense of everyone else.
* That the only questions we really need to as are how open am I?  How
inviting am I? How much more can I hold?  How grounded can we be?
* tricksters and fools lie in the most interesting places and in some
of the dead and dull places too and that regardless we ignore them at
our peril.
* that life lived as a practise of invitation has the power to
transform anything.
* that it is possible to raise children and facilitate their learning
in open space, and that should be a lesson to us all about where we
expect our living to come from.

Thank you Harrison for prompting the question and getting us into this
pickle in the first place...I'm not done answering, not by a long
shot.  I continue to live my life and learning about Open Space openly
on my weblog and on this list and elsewhere...it's just an evolving
state.

Meegwetch,

Chris

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